Re: 120 Kingston, 29 Story Tower in Chinatown
No offense, to any of you giving even a modicum of praise to this thing, but have you seen other buildings, anywhere? But this is just a residential tower, you'll say, or it's just like this everywhere else too. True on both counts, but excuses nonetheless. Awesome? What about a two-dimensional shape extruded 290 feet upwards and clad in an equally two dimensional array of materials that have nothing to do with this neighborhood could be defined as awesome? Let me grant that the convexity of building in plan is interesting and seems to respond in a way to the context, primarily just the physical shape of it. This is good, but design doesn't end there. That should have been step one, not one and the last.
This thing reinforces the notion that preservationists aren't necessarily motivated by the potential of losing some great piece of architecture, but by fear that what will replace it will be no better or even worse.